British maternity campaigner Milli Hill has been attacked online and cancelled by a charity for questioning the term "birthing people".
The mother-of-three, a best-selling author of books like Give Birth Like a Feminist and My Period , was badly bullied last year when she responded to a stranger on Instagram who had written: "Birthing people are seen as 'the fragile sex' who need to be kept under patriarchal authority by doctors."
Her response - "I would challenge the term 'birthing person' in this context" - prompted an avalanche of online criticism. One commenter even urged people to stop quoting Ms Hill, stop buying her books and stop following her on social media. She was accused of having "dangerous opinions, beliefs and views".
Most people of either sex would assume that "birthing people" was some sort of exotic synonym for midwives, but presumably "midwife" is also on the woke naughty step for its associations with the "patriarchal authority" of marriage.
But in line with trans ideology, which has bestowed upon the English language that notorious neologism "chestfeeding", "birthing people" includes those males who believe they are really female. As a consequence of her "dangerous opinions, beliefs and views", Ms Hill, founder of the Positive Birth Movement in 2012, faced calls for her books to be boycotted and was dropped by a charity she had worked with for years.
She narrates her disturbing encounter with vile and profane trolls in " I will not be silenced ", an article on her blog.
Amy Gibbs, the chief executive of Birthrights, a charity that campaigns for human rights in childbirth, sacked her. This is how she explained it :
"Birthrights is very clear that we are an inclusive organisation and are here for everyone who gives birth, regardless of how they identify. We reject any suggestion that respecting pregnant non-binary and trans people diminishes women's rights. I have also seen other social media comments/replies where you undermine trans and non-binary people and state that people can only be male or female. This is harmful and distressing and in my view not compatible with a rights-based approach to pregnancy and childbirth. I'm afraid that Birthrights isn't able to work with people who don't share our inclusive values."
To the wizards of woke, with their magical thinking and mind-reading powers, inclusivity only applies to people who share their views, and of course they do not include the human right to free expression. Like the idea of men being women and women being men, the idea of "birthing people" is simply a figment of the woke imagination - but it is the anti-birthing people that are the deadliest problem.
The whole madness of trans, with its denial of science, is built upon the denial of science that began when the humanity of the unborn was denied.
Ms Hill says she found the expression "assigned male/female at birth" rather "confusing because the sex of babies is more often than not determined in pre-natal tests and scans, rather than birth, while the world 'assigned' implies something is given to you, not innate - like biological sex."
And yet the same pre-natal tests and scans that reveal the biological sex of the unborn sometimes detect disabilities and health conditions which determine whether the baby lives or dies - whether they can make it to birth. Their humanity is innate, but their death is "assigned", and their human rights trampled on.
Abortion is surely the most violent of "medical interventions". Many women do not give authentic consent to the abortion because they are acting under duress, and lack accurate information and support - and the one whose life is taken does not, of course, give even nominal consent.
For these babies, there is no "positive birth", but only the "obstetric violence" of abortion, followed by a one-way trip to the trash, to the incinerator, or down the sewer .
Ms Hill finds it troubling that people are being "silenced" for expressing their views". - 'there has been an unwillingness to engage in discussion', and she feels she '"should not be attacked"' and have her '"livelihood threatened for asking for nuanced discussion, or worse still, for simply stating facts."'
Perhaps it suits the abortion campaign, which thrives on catchy slogans but avoids facts, to cancel mothers; they have been cancelling babies for long enough. Abortion supporters also cancel anyone who attempts to defend the right to life for the unborn by censoring them online .
As to those who would offer help to expectant mothers, abortion advocates show a much greater willingness to pass laws to criminalise them than to debate with them.
Some have warned that the "birthing people" controversy is just "the latest move towards a language which erases women". Indeed, we are fast approaching a Brave New World in which the F-word is ubiquitous but motherhood is a dirty word.
Sadly, for years now, the abortion campaign has sought to erase the unborn not just from the language - talking about "blobs of cells", "ending a pregnancy" and "induced fetal demise" - but from life itself. The wokest of people are usually the most anti-people of people, even while they shout loudest about human rights.